Scope and Content Note
The records of Russell & Company consist of family and general correspondence and business records. They cover the period 1812-1894, but are chiefly dated from 1819 to 1840, during which time Samuel Russell (1789-circa 1862) of Middletown, Connecticut, established and for a time operated the trading house of Russell & Company in Canton (now known as Guangzhou), China.
The Family Correspondence consists chiefly of letters to Samuel Russell from his two sons, George O. Russell and John A. Russell, and from his brother, Edward Augustus Russell (born 1797), a New York businessman involved in real estate investments and the East India trade.
The General Correspondence series covers matters related to Samuel Russell's personal activities. Significant in the correspondence is a group of letters concerning the construction of his Greek Revival mansion in Middletown during the years 1827-1830 and letters from the renowned architect Ithiel Town. Another group of letters concerns the health problems of his son, John Russell, and illustrates nineteenth-century medical practices for the control of epilepsy.
The Business Records series is subdivided into correspondence, financial records, legal records, and miscellaneous notes. The correspondence begins in 1812 with Samuel Russell's early business ventures that led to the establishment in 1819 of Russell & Company in Canton. Several partnership reorganizations followed, and in 1831 the China trading operations of John P. Cushing, William Perkins & Company of Boston, and Houqua, of Canton, China, merged with Russell & Company. After Samuel Russell's return to Middletown in 1831, he founded the Russell Manufacturing Company for the manufacture of elastic webbing. As his interests in the China trading company diminished, he became increasingly active in real estate speculation in Chicago and Milwaukee as well as in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
The early business correspondence provides insights into a merchandise distribution network involving Philadelphia, New York, New England, and the South and reflects monetary and banking problems in the United States during the period 1812-1816. Correspondence after 1818 contains much information on the daily operation of the Canton trading company, the Turkish opium trade, the Amsterdam commodities exchanges, and international monetary matters. Letters sent from Russell's partners in China after his return to the United States in 1831 provide detailed accounts of commercial and political activity in Chinese trading ports from 1830 to 1840. Some letters for 1838-1839 concern Samuel Russell's financial support of the American Colonization Society. The financial records consist of account books, invoices, price trade lists, and other materials; a few items relate to Russell's extensive real estate investments. The legal records are chiefly a miscellany of contracts, agreements, bonds, and wills, and include the original partnership agreement of the founding of Russell & Company in China.
Correspondents in these records include J. W. Alsop, Richard Alsop, Philip Ammidon, John Jacob Astor, Cyrus Butler, John M. Forbes, Robert Bennett Forbes, Augustine Heard, Gurdon S. Hubbard, Samuel Dickinson Hubbard, William H. Low, W. L. Newberry, and Samuel and William Wetmore. Firms represented by correspondence include Baring Brothers & Company, Benjamin & Thomas C. Hoppins, Clarke & Company, of Smyrna, Turkey, Claude Daniel Crommelin & Sons, Edward Carrington & Company, George Douglas & Company, Hull & Griswold, and Ward & Bartholomew.